Science Fiction

By Gerald Jonas

Published: May 8, 1994

If John McPhee wrote science fiction, the result might read like GREEN MARS (Spectra/ Bantam, cloth, $22.95; paper, $12.95), by Kim Stanley Robinson. Grand in scope, meticulous in detail, "Green Mars" continues the story of the settling of Mars -- and its transformation into a more Earthlike planet -- that the author began in "Red Mars."

Once again the principal character is the planet itself. Mr. Robinson seems to have swallowed whole the vast amounts of information about the Martian atmosphere, surface and internal composition that NASA's space probes have amassed over the last two decades. And like John McPhee's California books, which give new currency to the phrase "inside story" with their painstaking geological reportage, "Green Mars" takes the reader on a guided tour of a world whose potential for sustaining life can be awakened by a scientific undertaking known as "terraforming."

Disagreements over the pace and extent of this undertaking drive the narrative. In "Red Mars," a heated debate among the first hundred scientists chosen to study the planet exploded into violence in the year 2061, triggered by political meddling from an overpopulated and ecologically distressed Earth. Those scientists who wanted to declare independence from Earth scattered to form a loosely connected network of rebels and idealists who literally burrowed underground to survive.

"Green Mars" chronicles the growing strength of this underground, whose members still differ vehemently among themselves about the wisdom of terraforming even while their actions, both political and scientific, advance its progress. Thanks to the discovery of a "gerontological treatment" that prolongs life without entirely halting the effects of aging, the characters who survived the failed revolution of 2061 are still around -- most notably strong-minded women like Hiroko, the biological genius, and Nadia, the construction engineer, and strong-minded men like Sax, the scientific terrorist who thinks nothing of destroying one of Mars's moons to keep it from falling into the hands of his enemies but who walks on tiptoe to avoid stepping on the genetically altered alpine plants that are just beginning to bloom on Mars.

As in all Mr. Robinson's books, the theme of utopia -- the proper way to organize human society -- is never far from the center of attention. Mars in some ways represents a clean slate; but the whole burden of this series -- which is to conclude with a volume entitled "Blue Mars" -- is that we bring our problems with us wherever we go, and that lasting improvements in society must be incremental and evolutionary rather than radical and revolutionary, based not on seductively simple theories but on a deep respect for the physical nature of reality.

THE SHIPS OF EARTH (Tor/Tom Doherty, $22.95), by Orson Scott Card, is the third book in a projected five-volume series called the Homecoming Saga. For the prolific Mr. Card science fiction is a stage on which to act out dramas of high moral significance; of all the questions his characters wrestle with, the knottiest is when if ever the taking of human life can be justified.

Like the earlier books in this series, "The Ships of Earth" is set on the distant planet Harmony, 40 million years after its settlement by control freaks who programmed a supercomputer to keep the peace forever by stunting technological development among their descendants. Now the super computer, known as the Oversoul, is breaking down; to carry on its mission, it has recruited a band of humans from the female-dominated city of Basilica to return to Earth for spare parts and perhaps new programming. To reach the long-forgotten space station, this band must travel through a desert wilderness guided only by the Oversoul, which communicates to some humans in more or less vivid dreams and to others in telepathic sentences that often omit crucial information.

Mr. Card handles the biblical allusions with restraint; this is not so much an allegorical retelling of Exodus as a variation on a profound theme: How can imperfect people overcome their weaknesses to do what they know is right? The reversion to male domination on the dangerous trip through the wilderness is deftly managed, as is the maturation of Nafai, who killed a man at the Oversoul's behest in the first book and whom the Oversoul has now anointed as leader of the expedition. But the narrative bogs down in endless squabbling between Nafai and his envious brothers, who seem invincibly ignorant, despite periodic demonstrations of the Oversoul's awesome power. By the book's end, I was as eager as Nafai to begin the journey to an Earth that has no doubt been altered out of all recognition over the course of 40 million years.

James Patrick Kelly specializes in complexity. In his new novel, WILDLIFE (Tor/Tom Doherty, $21.95), he explores the bewildering ramifications of personality made possible by cloning and other forms of genetic manipulation. The central character appears at different times as a young woman, a young boy, an older man, a spaceship and a living replica of the world's most famous statue. I probably missed a few avatars because, in addition to the tricks he plays on his protagonist, Mr. Kelly plays with time as well; for reasons that escape me, the second section of the book takes place 15 years before the first section. By the time the chronology straightens out, the reader may be thoroughly lost in the maze of lost or switched identities.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that the novel has been stitched together from three novellas that were published separately over a period of five years. But it seems that Mr. Kelly revels in complexity for its own sake, adding twist after twist to a narrative structure clearly inspired by the double helix of the DNA molecule on whose endlessly elastic properties so much of the story depends. Despite his excesses, there is no question that Mr. Kelly's writing can generate uncommon power -- as in the section where young Peter, genetically stunted so that he retains the body of a 10-year-old, lives out a rebellious adolescence in suburban Connecticut while making his home literally inside his mother, who has turned herself into a three-quarter-scale model of the Statue of Liberty.

I, ASIMOV: A Memoir (Doubleday, $25) is a posthumous addition to the phenomenally prolific career of Isaac Asimov, who died in 1992 at the age of 72. During his life Asimov published close to 500 books, ranging from classic science fiction like his Foundation series, to popular science books like his guided tours through the human body and brain, to valuable reference works like "Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology," to such unexpected items as "Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare" and "Asimov's Guide to the Bible."

"I, Asimov" is not Mr. Asimov's only venture into autobiography. In 1977, he wrote a chronological account of his life in 640,000 words that appeared in two volumes. The new work, begun during an extended hospital stay in 1990 and completed in 18 weeks, contains 235,000 words. While it covers much the same ground as the earlier volumes, the focus here is less on what happened to the author than on what he thought about it. The result is a treasure for would-be biographers and for anyone interested in a mind that roamed freely through the formidable constructs of modern science and returned to tell the tales in lucid and energetic English sentences.

Among the Asimovean mysteries touched on in these pages: why he never took a vacation, why he failed as an experimental scientist, why his mother wanted to change his name to Irving, why he preferred writing nonfiction to fiction, why he hated to travel, how he felt about being Jewish, how he coped with deteriorating health and what he said to his wife and daughter as death approached.